Restaurant Technology

In the past few years, we’ve seen a rise in the use of technology as far as food is concerned. You can order food online, pay online, look up restaurant reviews on the go, and scan menus of restaurants without leaving your house. And of course, there’s the cupcake ATM and Pinterest. So, in honor of that, here are a few apps and other innovative ways technology is influencing the way we dine out.

Picture Menus: Who hasn’t been at a restaurant, seen a plate of food, and thought, “This is so pretty I should take a picture?” Well, most people do, and even more post them online thanks to sites like Instagram. Now, Comodo restaurant in NYC has found a way to take advantage of people’s photo obsessions. Last year, they launched the Instagram Menu under the hashtag #comodomenu which collects all the photos into one place. They encourage diners to leave comments about the dishes too and have it listed at the bottom of their menu, just in case anyone is having problems deciding.

iPads for customer service: Forget apps and websites, some restaurants are bringing the technology to patrons. Like Temazcal, a Boston-based restaurant, that brings its menu to diners on an iPad. Of course, it has pictures and allergen information and calorie contents too.

via feedthemind.com

Apps:

These days, there seem to be apps for just about everything and restaurants are no exception. Yelp (the site and the app) is pretty well known, but there were a few others I didn’t know existed. Like

TastedMenu

An iPhone app similar to Foodspotting, that helps users choose the best restaurant dishes. People upload pictures and reviews of dishes from different restaurants which everyone has access to. Then there’s

MenuPages

Also based off a website, which lists the menus from as many restaurants as possible in the city. And finally

OpenTable

An app that tells you what restaurants still have space and lets you make reservations online.

In London, the E-Table: London restaurant Inamo has taken the technology one step further. Diners at the Oriental fusion restaurant can use the E-Table, an interactive ordering system that projects an illustrated menu onto the table surface and lets diners order from there. They can also book taxis and set their table ambience by customizing the table surfaces.